How The Power Of SMS Is Solving Zambia's Malaria Epidemic

Mothers wait inline for their children to be vaccinated by health workers.ASSOCIATED PRESS

One of the most common infectious diseases, Malaria is a grueling challenge for many countries across the world. According to theWorld Health Organization, there were 219 million cases in 2017 - 435,00 of which were fatal.

Zambia is just one country where risk for Malaria is high, but its government has made a bold pledge to eliminate the disease by 2021. Over the coming years, it’ll invest $102.4 million in anti-malaria activities through the National Malaria Elimination Center.

As part of this ambitious initiative, Zambia has enlisted the support of global non-profit PATH to explore ways that technology can be used to solve the growing Malaria epidemic. In particular, the organization is working to improve data quality and analysis - providing a better insight into the disease.

“Malaria is not an easy problem to solve. Through the course of working with countries to address malaria, we’ve learned a key gap is utilizing digital tools to make the data gathered with traditional surveillance approaches more useful for decision-making,” says Cara Bradley, chief strategic partnerships and philanthropy officer at PATH.

“We’re fortunate to be working with companies like Twilio and others to bring some of the world’s leading data tools and strategies to assist Zambia’s efforts in eliminating this ancient scourge.”

Securing critical data

To track the number of malaria cases in the country and find available treatments, the Zambian government collects data from local health centers and stores it in a national database.

However, the system for reporting this information had a number of challenges around the accessibility and the quality of data. To deploy critical resources, decision makers need to dynamically see aggregate data and drill down to the finest grain of malaria case data without delay.

Jeff Bernson, chief data officer at PATH, says: “In order to effectively use data to fight malaria, it needs to be available to decision-makers so they can easily have full view at a national level and then in a couple of clicks view facility or community level problem areas.

“We also need to make it easier for them to create and close feedback loops with the health workers who originally captured data to either correct any errors in the data or simply act faster in trouble spots.”

In a bid to transform the outdated system, PATH and the Zambian Government have formed the Visualize No Malaria partnership with American cloud business Twilio and other organizations. Through its social good communications initiative, Twilio provides financial and strategic support to help not-for-profit organizations utilize technology in their important work.

Using Twilio’s programmable SMS network, the National Malaria Elimination Centre is able to seamlessly message health care facility staff regarding data quality issues. They can then report back with data that was previously missing.

Eradicating Malaria

Although the project is still in the early stages, it’s already giving Zambia’s Ministry of Health a clearer picture of the disease and its impact on the country.

Marianne Soko, an environmental health officer in the Itezhi-Tezhi district, says: “This is really great because the alert allows me to follow up on the missing reports and they can be updated both at facility and community level.”

So far, PATH’s integration with the Twilio platform has resulted in a 52% reduction of facilities with missing malaria reports. Jeff Bernson, PATH’s Chief Data Officer, says: “Seeing the drop in missing reports was a sign that we had tapped into something potentially transformative.”

With the initiative having proven successful, PATH is looking to take it to the next level by leveraging Twilio’s WhatsApp integration. The charity wants to make it even easier for workers to get in touch with the national centre.

Cara Bradley concludes: “Twilio’s API for WhatsApp adds a new line of communication between Zambia’s National Malaria Elimination Centre and the facility and community health workers who travel in and out of cellular service.

“This helps them share time-sensitive data on new malaria cases and health facility progress to inform our response efforts. We are extremely excited about the potential for this to help accelerate progress towards elimination of malaria in Zambia.”

I'm a freelance journalist with experience reporting on technology, digital culture and business. My work has appeared on Engadget, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, TechRadar, The Next Web, Alphr, Tech City News, Computer Weekly, Mail Online and The Telegraph. I also edit Tech Dragons,...